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12 Apps for Christmas: Odeon

Christmas is over and it’s the tricky, rather flat period as we head towards New Year. Many people up and down the UK will be taking this opportunity to visit the cinema - perhaps for three hours of The Hobbit or a slice of Madagascar to keep the kids quiet, so our app today is Odeon.

Odeon is the biggest cinema chain the UK, with over 100 theatres and using the the accompanying iPhone app you can book tickets.

To get the best from the app you really need an Odeon Premiere Club account, sign up for a small fee (£1.99) and every time you book tickets using the app you’ll get points. 800 points gets you a free ticket, alternatively save you points to save money on snacks, amongst others 400 points gets small popcorn, 700 points medium popcorn and 1000 points combo extra.

The app is split into four sections: Films, Cinemas, Rewards and My Odeon. For localised results start by going to My Odeon and selecting your favourite cinema(s).

Films lists all current and forthcoming movies with release dates, click a film to view the trailer, cast information, rate it, share with a friend and save for later. There's no function to find Kids Club films.

To book tickets, select the day, time, how many tickets you need and finally use a live map to choose your seats (below right). The step by step process is fairly straightforward, however the small size of the icons means choosing seats can be a little fiddly and several time our session expired before we selected seats, something Odeon will hopefully fix soon.

In it’s current format booking through the Odeon app is not as appealing as it should be. Our biggest complaint is the 75p per ticket charge for using a credit or debit card. Cinema tickets are expensive enough and it’s ridiculous a big company such as Odeon implements such a charge (payable to Bookit) just to pay using the app. Pay by points and there’s no charge. The iPhone app (sadly not Android) includes a virtual version Odeon Premiere Club card though, so if you don’t fancy paying the booking charge, buy tickets from the box office and collect points instead.

The app supports Orange Wednesday codes and there are opportunities to earn extra points by seeing certain films.

In its current form the Odeon app desperately needs an update to smooth over glitches and the Android version seems to lack features, if you’ve got an Odeon Premiere Club account the app is an essential download, providing an easy way to manage bookings and points, even if you’re not a member, but love the cinema it’s still useful for researching and booking.